A

TOUR IN IRELAND;

WITH

MEDITATIONS AND REFLECTIONS.

BY JAMES JOHNSON, M. D.

PHYSICIAN TO THE LATE KING,

PREFACE.

IT has often been objected to tourists, that they draw sweeping conclusions, characters, and descriptions of countries, over which they travel at railroad speed, and with very little real knowledge of those countries. The said objections are not always groundless; though strangers will not seldom, even in a hurried tour, make judicious remarks and observations that escape the resident inhabitants. In justice to myself, however, I must observe that eighteen years-the best, because the first, of my life, were spent in Ireland; besides several tours through it at subsequent periods. This circumstance exempts me from the prima facie charge of total "ignorance of the country.". Of all the lands through which I have journeyed, Ireland is that which calls forth the most frequent and the most conflicting emotions in the mind of a traveller of any sensibility, observation, or reflection. Laughter and grief--indignation and pity— admiration and contempt-rise, mingle, displace, or supersede each other, at almost every step, in that fine, but ill-fated portion of the British dominions!

The present tour was made, too, during a period of extraordinary excitement-when the "MONOMANIA AGITANS" was at its height, and when the fierce political and religious passions were ever ready to boil over, had